


Use As Directed

by Geek_Dreamer



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 03:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12740391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geek_Dreamer/pseuds/Geek_Dreamer
Summary: An Outlander Modern AU tale in which Claire is struggling with completing her residency and work-life balance issues.  I have just started this but it will feature Frank (briefly) and Jamie, along with other characters.  This is my first work of Fan Fiction. The author claims no financial profit from this work and Outlander and all related characters belong to Diana Gabaldon.





	1. October

_Chapter One  
_

 

 _ **T**_ he sunlight streaming through the blinds must have woken her. Claire sat up and groggily grabbed for her phone. 7:56 am flashed briefly across the screen before she sent the phone sailing back onto the bed. “Shit!! Shit! Shit-shit-fuckity-shit-shit!” She made a quick dash to the bathroom, stumbling over the wastebasket on the way. Grabbing her toothbrush, she made short work of her normal morning routine, emerging a few minutes later looking and smelling fairly fresh, if definitely not bright eyed and chipper. Throwing on her standard outfit of jeans and a sweater, she shoved her feet into her trainers, shrugged on a coat, and bolted out the door of her apartment. It was a crisp, autumn day; the sunlight was dappling the falling leaves, allowing their bright hues to shine against the brilliant blue sky. It was the kind of scene that just demanded one stop and take it all in, appreciate the quiet beauty of October in New England. Unfortunately for Mother Nature, Claire was in total ignorance of her spectacular display. Nose buried in her bag, rummaging through it for her keys, the entire block could have been on fire for all she would have noticed or cared. Keys found, she quickly got into her car and sped off down the block, narrowly avoiding hitting into the rubbish bins at the corner.

 

“Dr. Beauchamp, I was just about to page you. Dr. Irvine has been looking for you. He wanted to touch base with you before rounds this morning, but you weren’t in the lounge.” “Shit.” Catching the look of disapproval crossing the older man’s face, Claire quickly recovered and apologized. “Sorry, Pat, I must have hit snooze one too many times this morning. I’ll hurry and catch up with the group. Thanks for the heads-up.” Claire grabbed her stack of charts from the nurses’ station and headed to Mr. McCarthy’s room, where the interns on rounds were gathered. “…presented with abdominal pain. Following a positive Murphy sign and ultrasound, the patient’s cholecystitis diagnosis led to a successful gallbladder removal. “ Claire squeezed in at the back of the group, but despite her looking down at her chart, she could feel Dr. Irvine’s eyes boring a hole into her skull. “Dr. Beauchamp, glad you could finally join us. Would you please review for us the symptoms of postcholecystectomy syndrome?” The rest of the morning rounds duty was much the same. Dr. Irvine made sure to single her out at every bedside, hoping to catch Claire unprepared for her questioning, but Claire was ready with the correct response every time. She knew this was not in her favor, however, as Dr. Irvine grew only more terse with Claire as her attempts to embarrass her were repeatedly thwarted. 

Things were no better when she spoke with her privately afterwards. Despite having been the one to put her on doubles all week, Dr. Irvine was unsympathetic to her exhaustion. Claire had to endure yet another lecture on all of her faults, starting with her tardiness and ending with her lack of presenting the proper front to the public a resident at a teaching hospital should convey. “If you are always rushing about, darting to and fro and looking as if you are frazzled, how do you think the patients and their families view that? Who would you want performing surgery on your loved one? A calm, self-possessed doctor who looks as if she has done this a hundred times, or one who looks like she just misplaced her surgical cheat sheet?” Dr. Irvine took a breath, and softened her tone. “Claire, you are brilliant. You have a natural affinity for medicine that is a true gift. However, intelligence isn’t enough. Not for a woman. Sure, it is easier today than it was when I was in Medical School and doing my residency back in the dark ages. But it isn’t perfect. You are still expected to be twice as smart and work twice as hard to get even a fraction of the recognition your male colleagues receive. I know I sound like a clichéd commencement speech, but it isn’t. It is the cold, hard truth. Damnit, Claire, you need to wise up. Unless you want to spend your life working at some second-rate community hospital, you need to start acting more professional. Arrive at work early, not merely on time, so you have time to prepare yourself for the day ahead. Eat proper meals, don’t just grab a coffee and a granola bar. And get a decent night’s sleep.” “Dr. Irvine, if I may…” “Claire, before you say it, I know how hard you have been working. I know I gave you these shifts. To that end, I will look into getting you some time off in the near future. But you and I both know that this is the resident’s lot. If the others can arrive on time, so can you. If the others can take care of themselves, so can you.” With that, the older woman dismissed Claire from her office and turned back to the stack of files on her desk.

…

The small café tucked into the corner of the book store was her refuge. The baristas were all rude and served mediocre coffee, the tea was basic, weak, and came in bags (put in AFTER the hot water, no less!), the quiche was always burned, and the prices were exorbitant. Yet there she was. Despite all these glaring deformities, it did have one point in its favor—no one from work ever went there. It allowed Claire perfect and complete anonymity to curl up in a less-than-comfy- chair with a book and a cup of tea and just escape into the quiet for a little while. After a fourteen hour day, all Claire wanted was some place to be still both in mind and body. Home could never be her refuge, not with three other flat mates all competing for her attention to their stories about their love lives and their petty complaints about their co-workers. It seemed to Claire that all she had ever wanted was a quiet place somewhere with a sense of permanence to it. She had grown up surrounded by strangers; the death of her parents in a traffic accident when she was five had left Claire in the care of her Uncle, a Classical Scholar working nominally out of Oxford but in reality off on a perpetual research trip cum lecture tour that never allowed Claire to put down roots. A year in Upstate New York while Uncle Lamb (Quentin Lambert Beauchamp to the public) had a visiting professorship at Cornell, followed by a summer break spent on a dig in Greece, then three semesters at the University at Melbourne—this was just a sample of what was the pattern (or lack thereof) that she knew of life from the time of her parents death when she was five until she enrolled in University. Claire didn’t resent life for giving her an unconventional childhood, rather the opposite in fact, but it still meant that she never quite fit anywhere. Always the new girl with the funny accent, being shuttled from pillar to post, never able to form deep and lasting friendships. She had seen the world before most of her peers had even gotten their drivers licenses but she had never even had so much as a true best friend. Claire found herself able to make superficial friendships easily, but lacked the ability to let down her carefully built walls and truly trust in another. Her method of dealing with adversity was to internalize it, try to bury her feelings deep inside, and plow ahead. And to drink tea. Lots and lots of tea. Gallons of the stuff, with great splashings of milk and sugar when times were especially rough. Very English of her, to be sure, she would have smirked to herself. 

Claire gazed out the café window without truly seeing what was before her, her mind occupied with anxious thoughts regarding her discussion with Dr. Irvine. She knew Dr. Irvine had a point; Claire had been distracted lately and it was affecting her work. She knew it wasn’t like her to be so rushed and unorganized. She had been among the best in her class at University, graduating Magna Cum Laude from Columbia and had excelled in her studies at Harvard Medical School. It has been a surprise to Uncle Lamb that Claire had opted to study in the States, as he had excellent Oxbridge connections and they had both always referred to the England as “home”, despite the fact that Claire hadn’t spent more than five months in residence at a time there since her parents had passed. For Claire, however, an education in New York offered an opportunity that Oxford and Cambridge could never hope to compete with. An opportunity to be closer to one Frank Randall…


	2. Chapter Two, Part One

Chapter Two

 ** _F_** rank Randall. How even the thought of those two words used to send a thrill through Claire’s whole body. He had been an undergraduate student in Uncle Lamb’s upperclassmen seminar on Greek Democratic Philosophy and the American Revolution at Yale. Claire used to go to Lamb’s office after school, and it was there she first met Frank. He had stopped by to discuss some comments Lamb had made on a recent paper, and caught Claire alone. Seventeen year old Claire was a sight to behold, with her beautiful chestnut curls and laughing amber eyes and just the slightest spray of freckles across her nose. Frank, for all of his obsession with the world of academia, wasn’t so blind as to ignore the gift fate had seemingly dropped in his lap. Sure, being kind to Lamb’s niece could only incur favor with the man he wished to mentor him, but it was more than that. Frank found himself drawn to Claire from the moment he first set eyes on her. She was so unlike the girls he had met in his classes. Of course, the girls at Yale were intelligent and driven, that was a given. But they lacked what he viewed as Claire’s unique mix of sophistication and naïveté. He felt he would have to walk a very careful path with someone so much younger than him, he a worldly twenty-one. He spent a year cultivating a friendship with her, while also managing to secure Lamb’s recommendation for a graduate fellowship at Columbia. It wasn’t until she herself decided to also attend Columbia, as a biology major, that he allowed himself to peruse Claire romantically.

 

For Claire, the attraction to Frank was not instant, despite his refined good looks and easy charm. He was slightly taller than her, and slender, with what her Jane Austen loving heart might have called aristocratic features. Frank came from a family that could trace its roots back to the Mayflower (as his Mother would often brag to her friends in the D.A.R.) and a mix of family wealth and native intelligence ensured that he could pretty much choose whatever career path he wished. Claire would often listen in while Frank and Lamb debated over points of history, internally laughing at their heated words regarding men (and all too rarely for Claire’s taste) women long passed from this earth. Lamb, assuming the guise of an out-of-touch old man (which he certainly was not) would often send her and Frank off to do “whatever it is you kids do today…sipping your ‘lattes’ and listening to electronic screeching you call music.” Spending time with Frank, discussing film and literature over coffee and late night pancakes at the diner, Claire began to slowly see Frank as someone she could have a relationship with. Despite nearly being finished with High School, Claire had as yet to even go on a single date, not that she hadn’t been asked. She felt she had nothing in common with the boys she met at the various schools she attended. It wasn’t just that she was usually so busy with her various activities, volunteering at the local hospitals, college prep tutoring sessions to fill in the gaps that her piecemeal education had left, and working in the community gardens. It was that Claire never felt the desire to make room in her life for the needs and wishes of another. She was lonely at times, and would feel a little wistful when reading about Mr. Darcy or Gilbert Blythe, the idealized loves of every bookworm’s young heart. However, when push came to shove, the potential partners she had to choose from were just not her type. What her type was, she couldn’t exactly say, but she knew for a fact that a guy wearing Axe body spray in lieu of a shower following football practice was definitely not it.

 

Frank was different. It wasn’t just that he was older, a Man rather than a boy. It was that he seemed to fit so effortlessly into her world. They shared the same tastes for the most part; Frank was disgusted by her “juvenile” tastes when it came to literature, and she abhorred his guilty-pleasure interest in horror films. Frank took her to her first Opera at the Met, took her to fine dining establishments that Lamb, on an academic’s income, could only dream of. He bought her gifts of antique books and beautiful scarves, and before she knew it, Claire found herself falling in love with him.  


It was during the winter of her freshman year that Frank and Claire made love for the first time. Frank was gentle and patient with her, but also had a hidden reserve of strength and determination that roused a gentle passion in Claire. It wasn’t like the roaring flames that romance novels spoke of, but she found herself enjoying mapping this previously unexplored side of herself with him. They continued to date throughout Claire’s time at Columbia, and then did the long-distance thing for a while during her time at Harvard. While being apart was difficult for them both, Claire also enjoyed having some space and time to herself. She did stay faithful to Frank, aside from the occasional drunken kiss at a party. She expected he was much the same, but didn’t ask him directly about it.  


Then the unexpected, at least as far as Claire had ever thought about it, occurred. Frank managed to secure a Post-Doc position at Harvard. Before Claire knew it, they were living together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...  
>  Thank you so much for reading my work and leaving Kudos!! Comments and Kudos are very much appreciated!!


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